


if you can wait til I get home

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Category: No. 6 - All Media Types
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-14 23:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8033128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: Nezumi shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, and then remembered that he was supposed to be working on emotional honesty. That was one thing he’d decided while he was wandering around in the middle of fucking nowhere.or,In which Nezumi returns. He's learning how to deal with feelings; Shion is learning how to rebuild and run a city. They make it work.





	if you can wait til I get home

**Author's Note:**

> We were in the gold room where everyone  
> finally gets what they want, so I said What do you  
> want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. (Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain)
> 
> If we do meet again, we’ll smile indeed;  
> If not, ’tis true this parting was well made. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar V.ii.)

The city felt different. Not that Nezumi had ever spent much time there before, not that he had much to compare it to, but it felt real and alive and healthy in a way it never had before. The wall was gone, because of course it was, and when people were smiling, they were smiling like they meant it, not like they had to plaster on a fake smile and pretend to be content if they didn’t want to be murdered. Either they were genuinely happy or their acting had gotten better. Probably the former, because there were people not smiling, people arguing over prices in the market, someone crying on their friend’s shoulder. It was like the West Block, except without the constant feeling of imminent danger. People were arguing, but he never got the impression that someone was about to be shot. No corpses in the streets, no ID bracelets recording every movement. It struck Nezumi as a very Shion sort of place: not like the West Block, not like No. 6. The worst of both places had been cut away until only the third option remained.

And there were buildings that almost definitely hadn’t been there before: libraries, museums, theaters. Houses that were nicer than those in Lost Town but not as sterile and obviously expensive as Chronos.

He wouldn’t have recognized the street where Shion had lived. He’d only been there when the city was half-destroyed by riots and he’d been half-dead himself, and Lost Town had undergone significant changes since then. But he had his mice, and it was Hamlet who found Karan’s bakery, who told him that this was where he should go.

He hesitated at the corner. This was why he was here, he knew that. And he was making an effort to stop lying to himself. But now that he was here, he was afraid again. Taking the next few steps would make it real, and if he messed up this time there would be no taking it back. What was he going to do, leave for another three years?

This was why he was here, he told himself. There was nothing else to be done, no more reasons to stall. No more time for _but what if it’s been too long, what if he doesn’t want me back_ -

He shook his head, trying to clear away the thought. If that was the case, he would find out soon enough, and the only way to find out was to walk up to his house and knock on the door and see if he would be allowed inside.

He would have known he had the right house without his mice, without the sign for Karan’s bakery above the door, because there was someone kneeling in the street outside, feeding a small pack of very large dogs, and that someone was Inukashi, who stood up when he saw him and said, “What the actual fuck.”

“Nice to see you too,” said Nezumi.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

“Clearly growing up hasn’t made you any less of a shithead.”

“And going wherever the fuck you went didn’t make you any less of an asshole.”

Nezumi shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, and then remembered that he was supposed to be working on emotional honesty. That was one thing he’d decided while he was wandering around in the middle of fucking nowhere. Another thing he’d decided was that food tasted better when you had someone to share it with. But that wasn’t the point. The point was emotional honesty. “I did miss you, you know.”

“Sure,” said Inukashi, and Nezumi wasn’t invested enough in being an asshole to point out that there were tears in his eyes, that he’d missed him too, that he cared no matter how much he said he didn’t. Coming to terms with the fact that he had feelings for other people was his own problem, and Inukashi could deal with that- or not- in his own time. “So are you gonna leave again?” Nezumi shrugged again, his hands still in his pockets, as if he hadn’t already asked and answered that question for himself in a thousand different ways. “You better not show up just to take off again,” Inukashi said. “If you’re just gonna leave in the morning I might as well set my dogs on you right now.”

“So you do care,” said Nezumi.

“What?” Inukashi said. “No! It’s just, you’re gonna upset everything, and then Shion’s gonna be unhappy again.”

“That’s what I meant,” Nezumi said. “You care about him.”

“Whatever,” said Inukashi, shrugging and going back to petting dogs and pretending Nezumi wasn’t there. “But I’ll be watching you, so don’t you f-”

The door opened and golden light spilled out onto the street, along with the shadows cast by Karan and the small child whose hand she was holding. Inukashi fell silent, turning the rest of that sentence into a glare that conveyed the meaning well enough. Nezumi snorted. “Don’t laugh,” Inukashi said. “I have to be a good example for the child.”

“Wow,” Nezumi said. “Looks like someone’s all grown up and domestic.”

Inukashi made sure there was a dog blocking the child’s view of his hand before flipping Nezumi off.

Karan was staring at Nezumi, one hand in front of her mouth to hide her gasp of surprise. “Oh,” she said. “You’d better come in.” She let go of the child’s hand, letting him run to pet the dogs and generally get in Inukashi’s way, to reach out to Nezumi and herd him inside. “You missed dinner already but there still should be cake left.”

She ushered him inside, past the bakery display cases and up the stairs, and the room fell silent when they entered. Shion froze, a bite of cake halfway to his mouth, and then he stood. “Happy birthday,” said Nezumi, and another, younger version of Shion might have punched him for that, which he thought was fair, since there was another, younger version of Nezumi that didn’t come home, but maybe they’d both done enough growing up that they could have constructive conversations without punches being thrown or one of them on the verge of death.

Without saying anything, Shion left the table and pulled him into a tight hug. He was taller than he’d been, but Nezumi was taller too, and the top of Shion’s head, with his lovely white hair, came to just below Nezumi’s nose. Nezumi put his arms around him, Shion held him tighter, and they stood like that for long enough that someone- probably Inukashi, coming in from feeding his dogs and entertaining his child- cleared their throat impatiently.

Shion stepped back, looked Nezumi over, gave him a small, private smile, and then said, “Sit down, stay a while, and have some cake.” He almost made it sound casual, carefully not emphasizing _stay a while_ , pretending it wasn’t a question he was desperate to hear the answer to.

Nezumi gave a mocking bow and said, “Well, if His Majesty insists.”

Shion pulled up a chair between his seat and Karan’s, and Nezumi sat. Karan cut him a slice of cake with a gentle smile, and the woman across the table (he didn’t remember her name, but she’d been around during the days after the city fell, her and her daughter, clinging to Karan for comfort) said, “So, Shion, what were you saying?”

Shion stared at her blankly, and Nezumi almost laughed. “Um.”

“About your plans for education?”

“Oh,” Shion said. “Yeah. That.” He glanced at Nezumi, who raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t like he was going to be much good in this conversation or knew the first thing about Shion’s plans for education. He could probably give a pretty good guess, if he still knew Shion as well as he had but still. He couldn’t rescue him if he started babbling or making too much of a fool of himself. “Well,” Shion said, finally looking away from Nezumi, “I was thinking that we need a more balanced curriculum. I know science and technology and medicine are important, and I know we need people who are good at those subjects, but we shouldn’t force everyone to specialize so early. Everyone should get the same basic well-rounded education, and there should more options to learn about things like history and literature and art and theater.”

\---

Karan roped him into helping her clear the table after dinner, which was probably her way of making sure he stayed at least until he and Shion had a proper conversation. It was a good plan, until they were only halfway done when Shion came back inside from saying his goodbyes to Inukashi, Shionn, and the dogs and said, “We should talk.”

Nezumi gestured at the half-cleared table, and said, feigning being scandalized, “You’re leaving your mother to do all this on her own?”

Shion looked briefly guilty, but then he said, “She still has Renka to help her. And she’ll understand that we have catching up to do.”

He let Shion lead him up the stairs to his room, which was at the top corner of the house, about half the size of the room where they’d lived together, and there books stacked against the walls and scattered on the bed. Some he recognized from his own collection, but many weren’t and a few were even unfamiliar to him. “Been busy, I see,” he said, flipping open the cover of a copy of _Picture of Dorian Gray_ that had seen better days. Possibly the rodent teethmarks had always been there. Or possibly the mice in Shion’s mother’s house preferred paper to pastries. “You know, someone I acted with used to ask if I had a portrait in my attic that did my aging for me. Or maybe that was Rikiga who said that. Or both.” He shrugged. “I said I kept it in my room so I can make sure I’m doing enough sinning to justify making a bargain for eternal youth and beauty.”

“Also, because you don’t have an attic,” Shion said.

“That too,” said Nezumi, and he let the conversation falter, briefly struggling with urge to be embarrassingly earnest before giving into it and saying, “I almost thought you might stay there. Not in the attic that I don’t have. But you did talk about wanting to go back to that room.”

“Yeah,” Shion said. “But living there again didn’t feel right without you, and besides, I wanted to be closer to my mother and to the city center to get to meetings and stuff. But I go back sometimes, when I want to get away. And sometimes I bring books back with me. We keep getting new books from the outside, from people who had them hidden away, but I’ve been trying to read everything you had. Except I haven’t just been reading yours, because I didn’t want to get done with all of them before you came back. It was like having a piece of you still with me, and I didn’t want to run out because then it would feel like you really were gone.”

He really should have expected Shion to respond to one confession with another, and Nezumi told himself he wasn’t running away from that particular conversation by changing the subject to the first thing he could think of. “So, education reform, huh?”

“What?” Shion said. “Yeah. Not everyone thinks it should be a priority right now, but if we keep putting it off, it will be too late. This our one chance to change things before everything settles back down. And education is how we can shape the future, so it’s important to get it right.” He sat down heavily on his bed suddenly, knocking Nezumi’s dog-eared copy of _Hamlet_ to the floor. Nezumi picked it up and thumbed through it, watching Shion over the top of the pages. “What if we get it wrong?” he said.

“Hey,” Nezumi said. “What the fuck? Where’s your boundless optimism?”

“It’s still here somewhere,” said Shion. “It’s just a little hidden by everything else that’s going on. Do you have any idea how much work it is to rebuild an entire city? Actually, it would be easier if we were just rebuilding from nothing. Instead, we’re trying to build something good on the foundations of something terrible.”

“Something that was supposed to be good once,” Nezumi said, doubtfully but trying to keep Shion from sinking into despair. “Maybe the foundations of good are still there, and that’s what you’re building on.”

“That doesn’t help,” Shion said. “If their good intentions went so badly wrong, what’s to stop us from making the same mistake? What if I’m just the same as-”

“You’re not,” Nezumi interrupted. “Don’t ever say that. You’re _nothing_ like them, the creators of No. 6, the mayor, none of them.”

“But how do you know?” said Shion. “I’m trying to be better, of course I am, and I’d like to say that things are going to better. The wall is gone, the Twilight Cottages are gone, the Correctional Facility is gone, censorship and ID checkpoints and deliberately unequal distribution of resources are gone, and we wrote that into the new city charter, that we’re never letting any of that happen again. But I can’t- we can’t foresee everything, and what if one of my decisions here is what turns us onto a path even worse than the old No. 6?”

“You still worry about all this shit,” Nezumi said.

“Huh?”

“That’s how I know you’re never gonna let this city become a monster again. Because you care so much about getting it right. You’re never going to be like them because you still worry that you’re doing it wrong even though you have to know that you’re so much better. So hold on to that,” Nezumi said. “As long as you care that much, you’re gonna be fine.”

“But what if I’m not?” said Shion quietly. “What if it’s already too late, and this anxiety is just my soul rebelling against what I’m becoming, and I’m turning into everything I’m afraid of, everything you hate?”

Nezumi set down _Hamlet_ on top of a stack of books that also contained _Macbeth_ and _Julius Caesar_. “You’re reading too many of these fucking tragedies,” he said. “You’re not going to end up like that, you hear me?” He leaned down, taking Shion’s face in his hands, forcing him to meet his eyes. “ _We_ are not a fucking tragedy. Don’t you dare make yourself into some tragic hero after everything we did to keep each other alive.” He straightened up suddenly, stepping away, surveying the room, the names on the spines of the books: Shakespeare, Wilde, Woolf, Forster, Dickens. Not the most optimistic selections. “You’re spending too much time alone, reading unhappy stories. No wonder you think that’s what your life is going to be.” _And whose fault is it that he was left lonely with these books?_ he thought, and then he sighed.

“Don’t let me stop caring, then,” said Shion. “Don’t let me stop making sure I avoid all the ways this could go wrong. Don’t let me stop being me.”

He wasn’t asking him to stay, not directly. But he was asking him to be there for him, and he couldn’t do that from halfway around the world.

“I won’t,” Nezumi said, hoping that an _I won’t leave_ was implied along with the assurances Shion had asked for.

“Thank you,” Shion said. “You’re probably the only person who could

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Nezumi said, laughing when Shion sputtered and blushed.

Until Shion recovered his voice and said, all wide-eyes honesty, “There’s only you.”

And then Nezumi was the one caught off-balance, and he covered his surprise at such a sincere declaration. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised anymore by Shion’s capacity for genuine emotion that would be embarrassing to anyone else, but showing vulnerability was such hard work for him that he still didn’t understand how it could come so naturally. “Well, in that case, if you’re done having an existential crisis I have a present for you.”

It was a book that he’d noticed someone else carrying, another traveller on the road to No. 6, and he’d been struck by the appropriateness, considered stealing it, and ended up paying for it with a song. He pulled it out of his pocket and showed Shion the cover. “ _The Odyssey_ , huh?” Shion said. “What’s it about?”

“This asshole who takes ten years to find his way home,” said Nezumi, smirking, hoping Shion was going to appreciate how clever he thought he was.

“Ten years?” said Shion. _At least you only took four_ , he didn’t say, but it was there, hovering between them all the same.

“Homer says the gods were against him,” said Nezumi. “I think he needed to find himself first, before he could return.”

“And did he?” Shion said, eagerly, eyes wide.

“Well, he came home in the end,” Nezumi said, offering the book to Shion but not letting go when he reached out to take it so that their hands were almost touching as they held the book between them. “He had to stop running from his feelings eventually.”

“We’re not talking about the guy in the book anymore, are we?” Shion said.

“No,” Nezumi said softly. “We’re not.”

There was a pause, during which they stayed frozen, breathless, waiting, until Shion said, sounding incredibly fragile, “Did you mean it? You found whatever it was you left to look for?”

“Yeah,” Nezumi said. “And now I’m home.” The word felt strange in his mouth, carrying a sense of stability he never thought he’d have. Home meant permanence, a future. Home meant you planned on staying.

“For how long?” Shion said, gripping the book more tightly as if that could prevent Nezumi from slipping away again.

“As long as you want me,” Nezumi said, and Shion pulled the book away from him, set it down, and took his hands instead, and Nezumi didn’t pull away. _I’m allowed to feel this_ , he told himself, as he’d been telling himself ever since he’d decided to return. Avoiding attachment might have saved him once, but somewhere along the way, between accidentally letting Shion into his heart and leaving the city behind, he realized that he didn’t need to be afraid to feel anymore, and missing him had been worse than the risk of losing him. _I love him and he loves me and we both survived anyway. Love saved us instead of destroying us._

“I’ll always want you,” said Shion. “Do you believe that now?”

“I think so,” Nezumi said. “I’m trying to, I’m trying…” He brought Shion’s hand to his face, leaning in to the contact as Shion’s hand dropped to his neck, his fingers cool and gentle and pulling him closer. And then he kissed him, and it was everything he hadn’t said, everything he’d thought about saying when he was by himself, falling asleep looking up at the stars, far enough away that they couldn’t even be looking up at the same constellations. It was every sunset and every dawn that he’d spent alone, every time he saw an aster or felt the rain on his face and remembered and regretted and vowed to return. It was also kind of an overeager disaster of teeth and lips and hands that didn’t quite know how they fit together anymore, but they were sure as hell going to figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from If It Means A Lot to You by A Day to Remember.


End file.
